What is Keyword cannibalization?
This is when a site has more than one content piece targeting the exact same keyword, typically, unintentionally. When this happens, you are diluting your page authority and you are potentially accidentally taking the chances of your own rankings. That’s why it’s called keyword cannibalization.
Why is keyword cannibalization bad for SEO?
By cannibalising your own keywords and giving search engines a lot of options, you will be competing against yourself. By doing this you are splitting things like your Click Through Rate, risking not appearing at all for your hard work and even showing search engines that your content is stretched thin.
The consequence of keyword cannibalization can be things like
- Lost or reduced traffic
- Fluctuating rankings
- Lost sales or enquiries
Instead of multiple pages on the same exact topic, you can kind of create a hierarchy and link to similar pages. While creating tons of content on the same keyword, you’re not confusing Google because in the end, Google picks the content that best matches the search user’s intent. So, Google is making the most informed choice from your content on which to rank. The negative side effects that often happens with keyword cannibalization is that you often have one unpleasant piece of content ranking above an awesome piece of content.
How to Identify Keyword Cannibalization?
Now that you know what keyword cannibalization is, let’s find ways to identify them.
There are a few different methods that you can check for cannibalization problems. Let’s look at some of the proven ones.
- Google Search Console
This can be an excellent tool to find cannibalization issues.
To make use of it, go to the performance report, and you will see, by default, a list of queries that your site has gained impressions and clicks from.
Click onto one of those queries, through the “pages tab” and you will be able to see a list of the URLs that rank for that query and the associated stats that go along with it.
If the result shows more than one URL, this could be as a result of keyword cannibalization.
- Site: Search Operator
Utilise the “site: [domain] keyword” search operator directly on Google to find a list of pages that are found appropriate and optimised for a particular keyword.
If you have the feeling of cannibalization, perform a manual analysis check for the intent of these pages. If you observe that both pages have the same intent, then you can roll out fixes to make sure only a single page is targeting a particular intent.
What do you do to fix it?
1. Merge and update old content
So if you have those two pieces on the identical topic or keyword, pick the best one, merge the content that’s good from the old post into that new one and make that your single focus piece. And it’s always best to have an expert, a writer and editor through that piece, make sure its flawless, its current comprehensive, have a new meta title, meta description so that you get the most out of it.
Don’t forget to 301 redirect the URL of that old piece to the new piece and then just delete and trash that old one.
2. Remove that old version
If you have a truly unpleasant piece of content, just remove it from your site. But before you do to avoid any 404 scenarios, just 301 redirect the link to something that’s more current and relevant. Through this way you completely avoid a scenario where someone is clicking on that link somewhere, and they end up on a 404, which is really bad and you don’t want that to happen.
3. No-index duplicate pages
You can no-index pages that are duplicate in topic to each other. Of the pages that emerge for that keyword, if one of them you want to boost the organic ranking of, and the other you find effective internally on your site for users, then you can include something called a noindex tag.
This signifies the non indexed page won’t be seen in search results and should help any cannibalisation problems, but will still be live on your website.
4. Canonicalise your pages
If the two competitive pages are duplicate or near-duplicate, you can make use of a canonical tag. This is a snippet of HTML code, to help tell search engines which is the “main” page for that keyword.
This conveys that the “main” page must be indexed and indicates you can keep both pages live, but with a clear ranking for Google.
Conclusion
When it comes to assigning search ranks, current search algorithms are far more complex and discerning.
The most important factor is always going to be good content to get a good ranking, and ensuring you don’t cannibalise will support you better spotlight your intended content and get the consideration it deserves.
